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Early Results: An AI Booster Against Metastatic Breast Cancer
By Marilynn Larkin
Researchers at Georgetown University and their colleagues have found that a drug called Nexavar (sorafenib) may help certain postmenopausal women with metastatic (stage IV) hormone receptor-positive breast cancer.
“Eventually [in most metastatic patients], cancer cells can become resistant to hormone therapy, and so we’re trying to figure out how to overcome the resistance and prolong the time that patients respond,” explains senior investigator Claudine Isaacs, MD.
The study involved 27 postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive metastatic cancer that had become unresponsive to aromatase inhibitors (AIs). All participants received 400 mg of Nexavar twice daily plus a standard dose of Arimidex, an AI. Two patients had partial responses (tumors that shrank by at least 30 percent) that lasted more than six months, and five had no evidence of disease progression during the same period, meaning that about a quarter of patients had some clinical benefit.
Isaacs speculates that the drug may be successfully interfering with certain molecular pathways that would otherwise lead the cancer to resist AIs.
An upcoming large multicenter trial is likely to yield more definitive results.